Battlefield Lasers Being Developed Will Protect Front-Line Troops

Fox News ^ | 12/05/2001

[clueless idiot]

I love the comment, "We basically put the temperature of the sun on the target and within short order, it explodes"

[monocle]

Could a semi-permanent scaled-up laser be used to bore into the caves in Afghanistan?

[redhead]

Shades of "Real Genius!" I can just see Val Kilmer and his child-prodigy sidekick building that superlaser...

[Ford Fairlane]

One thing they keep forgetting - a laser will not penetrate thick cloud cover or heavy fog. Railguns are the way to go.

[DrJasper]

Couple the laser with a, 24 hour stay aloft, Predator, 3000 lb external load, and you have an automatic battle field. Just click (the mouse) and shoot (the laser)! Zap goes the emeny!

[Falcon4.0]

Charged Particles Mr. Muntz. Charged Particles!

[Clinton's a rapist]

The system uses crystals to store large amounts of energy released when the laser is fired. The laser weapons vaporize metal.

Very cool. I want one.

[r9etb]

One thing they keep forgetting - a laser will not penetrate thick cloud cover or heavy fog.

Nor battlefield or man-made smoke, presumably. There may be ways around this.

Question I have is: how quickly can these things shoot? And if THEL costs $3000 per shot, couldn't you just shell Israel into bankruptcy?

[Doctor Doom]

Guess again...the first one was fired up back in 1972...

Guess again - the first "laser" was fired from the Alan Parson Project in 1969 by my associate and college roommate, Dr. Evil.

He fired it from his moon base, aka the "Death Star."

[Blueflag]

Di-Lithium crystals, I presume.

[Stand Watch Listen]

Related article:

Promise And Problem Of Laser Weapons
Source: Air Force Magazine; Published: December 2001
Author:Catherine MacRae

[Blueflag]

Start a new rumor-- THIS is what made the center fuel tank explode on TWA flight 800 ...

It was the Navy test on the wrong target !!!! The sub did it.

[arielb]

[flamefront]

The new laser, called the Solid State Heat Capacity Laser, is about five feet long and a foot-and-a-half wide and will be small enough to be installed on an electric-powered Humvee.

Run out of ammo, and you can't drive home.

[xp38]

Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid!

[WindMinstrel]

Very cool. I want one.

No! Lasers don't kill people, people kill lasers, damnit! Uhh, wait, I mean, you can't hug your kids with high-powered energy weapons! Nope, that's not it either. Uhh, hugs not drugs? Visualize whirled peas?

feh, I give up. Guess I can't be a liberal after all

[Rebelbase]

"Could a semi-permanent scaled-up laser be used to bore into the caves in Afghanistan? "

They tried that on Star Trek once. It was all just an illusion.

[Ford Fairlane]

I'm not sure how fast the new ones can shoot - if they are fixed and hooked to a large power supply it is probably not very long. The Navy was testing Lasers & Railguns about 10 years ago and they both took about the same amount of time to recharge the capacitors. Smaller units, such as those that could eventually replace the Phalanx system have multiple banks of capacitors so they can fire nearly continuously, but they really require a nuclear power supply. At one time the Army (I think) had a M-60 tank with a laser mounted on it that took about 30 minutes to recharge. I think that was in the 70's.